George Salmon FBA FRS FRSE (25 September 1819 – 22 January 1904) was a distinguished and influential Irish mathematician and Anglican theologian.

During his boyhood in Cork, where his father Michael was a linen merchant, he attended Hamblin and Porter's School there before starting at Trinity College Dublin in 1833.

The three of them, together with a small number of other mathematicians (including Charles Hermite), were developing a system for dealing with n-dimensional algebra and geometry.

In these papers for the most part he solved narrowly defined, concrete problems in algebraic geometry, as opposed to more broadly systematic or foundational questions.

This was for a while simultaneously the state-of-the-art and the standard presentation of the subject, and went through updated and expanded editions in 1866, 1876 and 1885, and was translated into German and French.

This text remained in print for over fifty years, going through five updated editions in English, and was translated into German, French, Italian, and Japanese.

In 1866, he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Trinity College, at which point he resigned from his position in the mathematics department at TCD.

The highlight of his career may have been when in 1892 he presided over the great celebrations marking the tercentenary of the College, which had been founded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592.

[11] In 1880, while Humphrey Lloyd was provost, Samuel Haughton, Anthony Traill, John Jellett and others proposed that degrees be open to women, on the same terms as men.

Salmon was provost during the campaign for admission by the Central Association of Irish Schoolmistresses (CAISM), in which Alice Oldham was an important figure.

While Salmon was a conservative, his strong opposition to the admission of women cannot be dismissed simply; he had been a member of the council of Alexandra College, had supported girls competing on equal terms with boys in Intermediate examinations and his daughter, from the provost's house, had acted as coordinator for the Examinations for Women and was a member of CAISM.

[11] On 22 January 1904, Isabel Marion Weir Johnston became the first woman undergraduate to succeed in registering at Trinity, and by the end of the year, dozens of other women had done likewise.

[13][16] Both Trail and Mahaffy were eager to succeed Salmon as provost, and were lobbying to secure the position on the day of his death.